Presented below are two excerpts from my book 'The
Wedding Trousseau and Other Short Stories' that has been recently released. I hope you will like them!
1) Her face had acquired a kind of ruddiness and hair too appeared somewhat darker in the drowning evening sun and along with the slight upward slant of her eyebrows, her irritation was evident. “Where to, madam? What is all this? I have been taking this crap for months now. Many times, I notice young boys hovering around our house,” the woman thundered in a tone that clearly intimidated the timid girl who stood there visibly embarrassed. “Show me what this one has given you.” She snatched the paper bag from her thin hands and ripped it open in the manner of a suspecting wife, and started pulling out all the things, one by one.
“Auntyji, I…”
Poonam began. Her heart was pounding. She was a pretty young girl of seventeen,
clad in a simple blue salwaar-kameez. Nervousness clearly floated in her
small kohl-lined eyes, as dark as her neatly plaited hair.
“I knew, you would have
a ready answer. Did you tell your father?” said the lady putting all the things
on a rusted three-legged stool lying in a corner.
“Because I am …” Poonam
said taking a step back, her heart still beating faster.
***
2) However, that young
woman came there pretty much regularly and sitting under the shade, would
mutter something with a bowed head. She would come sometimes in the lazy
afternoons that put the world in a slumber, when trees and birds did not bother
to rustle and chirp, or sometimes in the late evenings when retired flocks
would fly home and breeze hummed many tunes solemnly.
She used to cry a lot
initially, the old watchman would tell those who bothered to listen or ask out
of idle curiosity. Stroking the silken cloth whose borders would shimmer in the
bright sunlight peeping indiscreetly from the thick mango blossoms, the young
woman would lean over it and rested or rubbed her cheek over it a few times.
This had become her ritual that she followed religiously, much to the curiosity
of many a folk.
The book can be purchased at a discounted price (with COD) from -
Happy Reading!
